A More Social Approach

After having a think about the direction of this blog, I’ve come to some conclusions:

1) For it to be worthwhile, I need to update it more often and give it a more distinct identity.

2) For me to do that, I need to come up with stuff that perhaps isn’t covered in such depth elsewhere.

3) Given my increasing professional and personal interest in all things social media and tech-related, why not produce more content about those things?

So, in an experiment starting from today, I’m going to try and post (along with all the other not-so-regular gubbins) regular updates summarising stuff from a few Korean-language sites covering social media and tech issues. There are some undoubted challenges in doing this, not least my still far-from-perfect knowledge of Korean and the tech industry. For these reasons, I would be delighted to hear any (constructive) feedback on mistakes I make. However, I’ll give it a go and see if I have the stamina to get up early a few times a week and post about three or four big stories.

So, without any further ado, here are a few choice bits for today:

Bloter.net has a story speculating on the reasons for KT’s sudden postponement of pre-orders for the iPad in Korea. Though KT’s official announcement puts it down to “global currency issues,” Bloter notes that the won has been rising against the dollar since at least May, making KT’s very sudden announcement yesterday — issued just hours before pre-orders were due to begin at 8pm — somewhat puzzling. The site speculates that KT’s proposed payment period of three years would mean that iPads are effectively going out for free, which is perhaps not a message that Apple would be keen on. Alternatively, they say, KT’s eagerness to get the iPad out this week, in time for the release of Samsung’s Galaxy pad, may just have seemed a little too hasty for Korea’s Apple office.

The social medium they used most for marketing was Twitter (88%) closely followed by Facebook (87%). (Cyworld was nowhere to be found — is social media marketing even possible there?) And:

86% of respondents said they do all their social marketing in-house.

Finally, Premee at Twitterian looks at another of the profusion of third-party Twitter apps from Korea. This one’s called Seesmic Look, and it aims to show you “everything in a single glance.” Twitterian’s reviewer lauds Seesmic’s ability to make Tweets look “beautiful” and to show Twitter trends in a single place. On the other hand, s/he bemoans the app’s over-reliance on Twitter’s own trending function, which he says makes it difficult to find trends in Korean, and says that the app’s emphasis on aesthetics has come at the cost of some function. Here’s the sample video: